Meet Buttercup.
On Brenna’s birthday we spent the day making this little bear. She’s made from a fluffy throw I found at Marshal’s. It is almost too soft to describe. Brenna thought this bear needed to be seen by the internet, so she took her little Buttercup on a photo shoot.
Now Brenna is not the only one in this house that loves to sit in the living room and read ALL DAY LONG 
I’m tired. I’ve been quite a slacker in posting here–and in lots of other areas. I’ve been really bad about doing school every day, because I’m just not quite sure what to do. We’ve been doing first grade Saxon Math, which has worked pretty well so far because it is so gradual in adding concepts. Brenna is perfectly capable of every bit of it–and a little more. But, now we’ve reached a point where she has a worksheet of facts and the regular worksheet everyday, and it is just out of her 5 year old attention span to be able to enjoy. So, I’ve completely backed off on the math and structure and let her just read. But she has plenty of attention span for books. She’s been reading about 2 novels a week. This week she read Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz and Queen Zixxie of Ix, both by L. Frank Baum. Last week she read Ozma of Oz and one of the American Girl books. I guess I just feel guilty because it doesn’t take any effort on my part to plop her on a chair with a book and let her disappear into Oz for the rest of the the day. She’s got to be learning something, right? I shouldn’t be feeling bad that my 5 year old is reading at an 7th or 8th grade level, but just isn’t interested in 1st grade math.
So, I guess I’m just writing this to try to convince myself I’m doing okay, even though I’m not doing much. I have been spending a lot of time with church responsibilities. There have been lots of sugeries and babies born. There is one sister who has a 3 year old boy, a 2 year old boy, 16 month old twin girls, she’s pregnant due in April, and in the process of a divorce. I have no room to complain about being tired.
But I sure want too
We did way too much Trick-or-Treating. We had a “Trunk-or-Treat” in the church parking lot one night. Then they opened up Barry’s office building for parading costumed children. And, of course, we had to go through the neighborhood on the real Halloween night.
Brenna and Jonah did sketches and decided they wanted to be a cat and a mouse.
They made their noses and whiskers.
Trick or Treat!
Dish towel aprons–I just couldn’t resist. My kids needed some art aprons, I needed something to keep dinner off my pants (even though my shirt is usually covered in baby snot), and Martha dish towels were on super clearance at K-mart, so the price was right. Aprons for all! (Well, 3 aprons and a bib.)
Amy has a monthly party at her blog dedicated to aprons
and this month’s assignment was so easy I had to join.
It has been a busy week. Well, it has seemed busy, I guess, but come to think of it, there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary to do. I just felt busy. I think because I was sick. I had a fever on Wednesday, felt yucky all day yesterday and had to go grocery shopping anyway, didn’t sleep a wink until about 4:00 this morning, and I’m trying to wean Logan–once a day would be good. That’s why I didn’t sleep last night. My teeth hurt, my nose was stuffy (so I had to breath with my mouth open which made the metal/ rubberband contraptions in my mouth that much more uncomfortable), my throat hurt, my ears ached, I had horrible menstrual cramps, AND I hadn’t nursed a baby since nap time early that afternoon and consequently couldn’t lay on either side or move my arms. Blissful? 800 mg of ibuprofen helped once I reached the point of desperation.
Funny things:
We had a “Girl’s Night Out” craft night at church last night–just bring something to do and sit and gab. I got home a little after ten and as I was heaping my load onto the counter I looked in Ellie’s food bowl right there under the counter. It was FULL of rabbit food. Was there a reason for this? I went and nudge Barry to ask about it and he just grunted. I was grinning so hard that I just broke out laughing. Silly, silly.
Barry did the obstacle course with his group yesterday for PT–you know, climbing walls, jumping logs, balance beams and ropes. Well, he was very proud of his monkey bar performance. I guess he was the only one to make it all the way across–and he even did a “skin the cat” to get off at the end. Now, you know who’s been practicing at the playground!